 The Price of Prudery I sort of figured that when I got old I'd somehow automatically "get religion"... ...and like many in my generation start lambasting youngsters for (among other things) their sexual immorality. Maybe even sound like those preachers who equate sex with immorality and immorality with sex, or some of those women libbers who equate sex between loving partners with violence—and even rape. The older I get the more I feel certain that the real immorality is in these attitudes. Okay, so what's it matter —— prudery is its own punishment —— so why shouldn't we just let the bluenoses have their way? For starters sexual prudery is costing thousands of lives because of successful efforts to keep young people from learning about safe sex. The approach to sex education that starts and stops with "just say no" is not only resulting in the death of hundreds of thousands of our young people... ...not to mention costing us hundreds of millions of dollars in medical bills... ...but with sexual diseases leading all other types among young people, the political-religious reluctance toward taking realistic and effective measures to control these diseases constitutes a type of criminal neglect. As if this wasn't enough, lately, this resistance has gone so far as to bury or discredit studies originally posted on government web sites that show that these measures are effective. Those who say that we need to spend even more millions on preaching abstinence need to look at the facts. All wishful thinking aside, the teaching of safe sex has been far more effective in curbing such sexually transmitted disease as AIDS.* Is it just a coincidence that Latinos, the predominantly Catholic minority group who are forbidden by church doctrine to use condoms... ...now have one of the highest percentages of AIDS? And then there are the millions of unwanted and hungry children in the world; but that's a story for a different time What's being blissfully ignored is that most young people engage in sex. The secret's out; why don't we all wake up and accept reality? Some day our prudish, unrealistic and repressive attitudes about sex will be just as ridiculous... ...as the beliefs we once had that the world was flat and that the sun revolved around the earth... ...beliefs, incidentally, that the religions of the day staunchly supported, backed by threats of eternal damnation. It only took them a few centuries to get around to seeing the errors of their ways. I wonder how long it will take for today's self-appointed guardians of our morality to wake up to reality? And how much unnecessary suffering and death will result in the meantime? *Editor's Notes: According to USA Today, 50% of young people in the United States will contract a venereal disease before age 25. Nicholas Kristof of The New York Times, said,
According to The New York Times, since President Bush came into office, information that supports the effectiveness of condoms in the prevention of disease, as well as studies that show the use of condoms do not result in earlier sexual activity, has disappeared from government health sites. Since the outcomes of the scientific studies that support these findings haven't changed, it is assumed that the present conservative agenda, which opposes these views, has influenced these changes. Government-mandated filtering software in schools and libraries is also blocking access to information on such things as disease control. As noted here, this has impacted some of the materials previously available at CyberCollege and the InternetCampus. According to The New York Times, 4/18/03, researchers now have to make sure their funding proposals don't contain sex related words or phrases that will offend the Bush Administration's conservative views. This is impacting AIDS research.
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